


Much Ado About One Thing

by Guede



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Laura Hale, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awesome Lydia, Bad Matchmaking, Bickering, Derek Hale is Bad at Feelings, Dom/sub Undertones, F/M, Guilt, Halloween, Hate to Love, Humor, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Polyamory, Scott is a Good Friend, Topping from the Bottom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 14:29:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12459720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: One of those alternate universes where Derek and Peter come back to town and Peter meets Stiles and…they hate each other.Derek really would like to know why it’s his job to fix this.





	1. Chapter 1

Right after their house burned down with most of their family inside of it, while the EMTs were busy attending to a downed firefighter, Laura and Derek were sitting inside an ambulance when she had a panic attack about the idea of the police investigating their family. Sure, they were suspected arson and homicide victims. They were also _werewolves_ , werewolves tend to shift under stress, and there was no way in hell they were going to be allowed inside the house to check the bodies first. So Laura hijacked the ambulance and drove them out of there.

Them and Peter, and no, Laura wasn’t really planning that and honestly, Derek had forgotten about him too and yeah, they were both shitty people and shellshocked about what just happened to their family and _anyway_ , Peter moaned when Laura was barreling down the interstate and she nearly swerved them all into the rail. And then they finally remembered about him.

Obviously, they needed to ditch the ambulance. They got really lucky with the fact that that particular stretch of interstate ran through some of the wildest stretches of California, but that wasn’t going to last beyond another five miles. So Laura pulled over and Peter moaned again, and they wasted a good ten minutes while Laura tore the ambulance apart looking for cash, credit cards, anything they could use for funds while having a second panic attack about what the hell was she supposed to _do_ , Peter didn’t look like he was going to make it, if he died on them on top of everybody else she was just going to give up because _fuck_ was she not up to being alpha and.

Anyway, long story short, they took him along. He’s their uncle and they’re pack and nobody leaves pack for the hunters and okay, honestly, at least that way they’d know where he was. Also Derek was about a breath short of catatonic with guilt and when Laura screamed whether he thought he could carry the drugs, right, they can sell those, he…asked her how they were going to hide them. And what she could think of just then was they’d use sick Peter as an excuse.

So Peter came with them and actually didn’t die, and eventually, when they got far enough away from California, Laura switched from thinking about running to thinking about surviving, so they did their best to nurse him back to health. They had no fucking idea what they were doing, but Peter got better, sort of, slowly, and they kept scuttling along till one terrible night in rural Minnesota near the border—Laura was thinking maybe becoming Canadian would help, because she was still _panicking_ , just about different things—Derek up and confessed about Kate Argent.

Laura didn’t believe him, so he had to give her more details. Then she did, and she—she was really angry, not that Derek was going to argue with that. She was shouting at him and he was…feeling oddly relieved, because at least his remaining family hating him was finally out of the way, and suddenly Peter woke up, because family drama and even as a vegetable, that was irresistible to him. Which distracted Laura and when she calmed down, she forgave Derek for some reason and just said they need to help Peter. 

In retrospect, Derek’s pretty sure she wasn’t actually calm, she’d just run out of anger and went with the first thing that popped into her head. They were both pretty desperate for something to do, and once Peter was conscious enough to talk, he actually had instructions to carry out and they mostly didn’t involve pointless troublemaking. 

Mostly. There was another really bad night in New Jersey, when Peter finally put together the pieces about their family and he and Laura had a screaming match about her shielding Derek and then Derek and Laura had a fight about her doing that when he doesn’t deserve it, and Peter ended up wading into it because he was fed up with everything and…then they didn’t kill each other. Again, Derek thinks they were all just really, really tired at that point. Peter might’ve been better, but he still wasn’t on his feet.

Anyway, they stopped living in shitty isolated farmhouses and moved to Brooklyn, and somehow, things got better. They were pack and they acted like it. Sort of. The easy access to high-end coffee helped a lot with Peter’s temper, anyway.

Cut to eight years later and it’s still just the three of them, but Laura is dating a white witch who genuinely doesn’t seem to have nefarious plans, Derek has actually managed to graduate with a college degree, and Peter—Peter went and worked in financial services for a little bit and managed to bankrupt the entire Argent family, and now seems to spend most of his time trying to figure out what insanely expensive hobby he feels like dropping that cash on, in between gloating over regular reports of their enemies’ continued struggles. So…Derek thinks they’re okay, as things go. Which is when Peter walks in and says Chris Argent called him up and something’s going on at their old family home in California and they’re going out there to check it out. 

See, the thing is, them taking Peter along _really_ didn’t make him any less of an asshole.

“Just explain to me again why you suddenly aren’t trying to starve this guy to death,” Derek says as they drive up the road to the preserve.

Peter heaves an irritated sigh, which is not entirely unjustified since this is probably the hundredth time Derek has asked him. On the other hand, it’s completely within Peter’s control to give Derek an explanation that actually makes sense, so he doesn’t have to _keep_ asking Peter. “Because he somehow managed to emerge from that family with an intact moral conscience, and it’s useful to be able to guilt a hunter of his caliber into looking after our interests. I know you’ve got a brain in there, nephew—”

“Oh. Well, you could’ve just said,” Derek mutters.

“I did. Repeatedly,” Peter says, ignoring the fact that he did _not_ say that, and up till now had just been going with various versions of ‘because I have a brilliant plan.’ He swings the car around the last turn in the road, flicking on the high beams just as several figures come into view. “So would it be at all possible if you could restrain yourself until after we’ve milked all the use out of them?”

The figures flinch back and stumble to the side of the road, which was probably what Peter wanted. The problem is, there’s a big metal sign at the preserve entrance that Derek doesn’t remember being there before, and it catches the light and bounces it back into _his_ eyes, which his were-sight doesn’t do a damn thing to mitigate. So by the time his vision clears enough for him to get out of the car without stabbing himself into the door or something like that, attacking people’s a moot point anyway.

“Hi, I’m Scott McCall,” says a blurry, alpha-smelling but extremely eager-sounding person-shaped shadow who comes forward and tries to shake Derek’s hand. “I’m, um, the—alpha around here, sort of, and this is Allison—”

“I’m really, really sorry about your family,” the shadow next to him says. She sucks in such a huge breath that Derek pauses and listens to see if she’s going into cardiac arrest, then lets it out in a torrent of words. “Kate was horrible, and somebody should’ve stopped her, and I just really wanted to make sure somebody from my family said that to you. I’m not expecting anything—you don’t even need to take my apology, but I just—I wanted you to know that it’s out there and somebody’s acknowledging it and again, I am _so_ sorry.”

“Allison,” comes an alarmed grunt from the side.

Derek can kind of make her out now, and this Allison is trying to windmill away her nervous-looking father with her free arm while looking anxiously at Derek. She and this Scott are holding hands on her other side, but he’s letting her stand slightly in front of her rather than shielding her. “I’m sorry, it won’t happen again, we’ve completely overhauled the Code,” she goes on.

“Okay,” Derek says, still trying to blink his eyes clear. He’s just trying to cut her off because both she and Scott keep edging forward and it really—it really looks like they’re going to try and hug him, for some reason, and he’d just. He’d rather not. Even before you get to the family issues. 

That’s all, but Allison’s shoulders suddenly sag in relief and she smiles at him, and Derek’s vision finally clears enough to show that she’s surprisingly young. And pretty. Scott smiles at Derek too, and he’s not bad-looking himself. And also it’s just…they somehow look like two hopeful little puppies, smiling like that, and Derek doesn’t have any idea who this Scott guy is but strange alphas generally are bad news, and the _last_ time Derek thought an Argent was attractive, his family was murdered, but—it’s strangely effective, that puppy look.

So Derek’s a little thrown. He doesn’t know what to do, so he doesn’t do anything and for a second they just awkwardly stare at each other. Finally Scott pulls himself up a little, brushing against Allison, who moves her shoulders uncertainly and then raises her hand. “Well, so…I’m guessing it’s not easy to be back, but since you’re here, if there’s anything we can do for you, just—”

“—an idiot would think it’s got anything to do with druids!” snaps somebody off to the side.

“Oh, _really_ ,” says Peter, with the drawl he saves for the people he’s about to mark down for complete monetary annihilation, as he puts it. “And of course, you know this because those Ogham letters burned into the sides of the deer are merely decorative.”

“Or they’re a complete red herring, because hey, it’s not like incompetent neopaganists haven’t made a mishmash of unrelated cultures ever in history before.” A man about Scott and Allison’s age is squaring up to Peter, or at least, he would be if his flailing arms didn’t keep swinging him backwards. “Which was all in the _detailed, footnoted with appendices and full bibliography research report we sent you._ You know, when we let you know that people were trying to use your family’s house as a black magic site. Like the _good people_ we are. Non-black-magic people, even. I mean, usually.”

Chris looks over, frowning. He shifts as if to head towards them, then gives Derek a sharp glance—he might feel guilty but he definitely isn’t convinced Derek won’t go after his daughter, says his narrowed eyes. Except then the unnamed third man goes on about linguistic errors while Peter makes amused scoffing noises, and Chris…promptly does leave Allison to Derek so he can try to—to get Peter to go off with him? It’s as if he’s worried about Peter’s well-being.

For a second Derek wonders if maybe he should’ve considered alternative explanations for Peter letting Chris off the hook. Then the man arguing with Peter dramatically shouts some gibberish while pointing into the preserve, and a huge flaming figure suddenly flares up. 

“See?” the man says. “Pumpkin! Pumpkin! Bonfires, okay, one hundred percent Celtic, but are you really telling me the druids discovered America—oh.”

“Goddamn it, Stiles, did you have to,” Chris hisses, shouldering the blinking man aside as Peter, having dropped back into a hands-and-knees crouch, snarls at them, smelling of blind panic.

Derek would go over too, except, well, he doesn’t really react well to unexpected fires either and is a little busy trying to keep himself from doing something he shouldn’t. Also, it’s been eight years and he’s still reacting like this and why is there a giant _fiery pumpkin_ in the preserve?

Anyway. It takes a while to sort out, even after he comes back to himself, sitting on the back bumper of Chris Argent’s SUV while Scott helps him hold his head between his knees and Allison asks whether he wants the water or the wolfsbane-spiked aspirin first. Derek shakes his head, then rubs at his temples. “Anybody dead?”

“Huh? Not since morning patrol,” Scott says, puzzled but without a speck of disgust or astonishment, as if that is a normal question and the weirdness is just Derek’s timing in asking it. “Are you okay? Hey—no, you still smell kind of touch-and-go, I think you should sit a few more seconds.”

“Sorry. We told Stiles about your family background but he gets a little worked up about his research,” Allison says. She straightens up for a second, then bends back down to look Derek in the eye. “Your uncle’s okay, he’s just over there—”

“I said I was sorry about triggering you and I am, but that’s completely separate from the fact that you don’t know what you’re talking about!” Stiles snaps.

“Says the man who’s taking his detective cues from a comic strip with a delusional beagle and a pack of depressive brats,” Peter snaps back.

“—arguing with Stiles,” Allison finishes with a sigh. She fiddles with the water bottle. “Listen, you can totally ignore me on this, but do you think it’d be better if we just called it a night and maybe tried this when you two are rested and…and…”

“You _literally_ just quoted _V for Vendetta_ , don’t give me that, especially when Alan Moore’s got his dystopic themes nailed down but wouldn’t know a magical conspiracy if it glomped him at a con,” Stiles snorts.

Derek doesn’t even have to look up. All he has to do is whiff and pick up that particular note of irritation in Peter’s scent, and he just nods. “Yeah, sounds good. Let’s do this after Peter gets some coffee.”

“Hopefully the baristas in this town are somewhat more competent than its would-be pop-culture experts,” Peter sniffs, overhearing. “Seeing as it was actually a _Watchmen_ quote.”

“Yeah, Stiles could probably use some too,” Scott says, his hand leaving Derek’s back as he sits up. He shifts uncomfortably as Stiles lets out a series of annoyed stutters, then starts on a rant about how oh, he mixes up his two books involving similar themes by a single author once because he’s sleep-deprived because he’s just read through the entire unabridged _The Golden Bough_ while here comes some werewolf who can’t keep his continental and insular Celts straight. “I’m just…I’ll just…get him and…um…”

“I think Dad would offer to get your uncle, but…” Allison motions awkwardly with her hand. 

Oh, right. They’re Argents—and how the hell Derek forgot that, even just for a second…really says something about how prepared he is for this town. Fuck.

Then Derek looks up and Stiles is hanging off Peter’s arm while apparently trying to shove his cell up Peter’s nose, and Peter’s only tolerating it because _he’s_ busy trying to drag Stiles over to the still-smoking pumpskin-shaped bonfire so he can point out some kind of clear evidence of pre-Wiccan influences, whatever that means. And…it also says something about how prepared Derek is for this town that that makes him look at Allison again. Seriously. Because…honestly, Derek’s a werewolf and all but he’s just _one_ werewolf, and now Peter is mad because somebody’s told him he’s wrong about magic.

“No, I’ll get Peter,” Derek mutters. To hell with it. They might be two Argents and a freakishly nice alpha, but worst comes to worst, Peter will kill them anyway. Might as well have them lend Derek a hand first. “Just do me a favor, block him if he tries to dodge for the sign.”

“Um—okay, right, we can definitely do that,” Allison says, blinking and nodding. “Right.”

“Okay, great, so let’s just…meet up again tomorrow?” Scott says, looking hopeful again. “I think we’ll all be feeling a lot better then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ogham is an early Medieval alphabet, which likely was invented after Roman contact with Britain and so cropped up quite late in the history of the Celts. So it's unlikely druids were using it for most of the rise of the Celts.
> 
> There is a strain of Welsh legends about a Welsh prince who discovered America before Columbus.
> 
>  _The Golden Bough_ is an extremely long comparative mythological study. As in, the abridged version is still about a thousand pages. It's got interesting stuff in there but God, is it long.


	2. Chapter 2

They do meet up in the morning, although Derek honestly thinks it has more to do with Peter being incapable of letting somebody think he knows more obscure magic stuff than him than with the fact that yeah, people are actually practicing black magic over the graves of their dead relatives and that has a lot of negative consequences they care about, the _least_ of which being getting the family name associated with unsolved murders. And then a few more times, and _then_ Derek and Peter move out of their hotel and take an Airbnb for a month because it looks like they might be dealing with a whole evil coven and that’s going to take a while to root out.

Then there’s some fighting and some kidnapping and a _lot_ of women trying to come onto Derek so that they can kill him, which he is honestly much better at spotting these days so he’d really like to know why it’s always him and not Peter. And Scott might be way too optimistic but he’s no slouch in a fight, and the Argents really _are_ on the Hales’ side, and eventually they take the coven out.

Also, Derek might end up in Scott and Allison’s bed. They just—they just keep asking him how he’s doing, and springing things on him to make him feel better, and it’s confusing and when he tries to just straighten it out, things kind of happen. Which he doesn’t actually mind that much, because no, he doesn’t want to date people who want to kill him, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to date people at all. He’s not just some asshole in a leather coat with claws, he’s got fucking feelings, okay?

Anyway. That’s all sort of good, but then there’s the fact that Stiles and Peter don’t feel any better about each other. 

Actually, they pretty much hate each other. Loudly. Insisting on an audience about it.

“I know you’re in there, Scott!” Stiles hollers, banging on the door of the apartment Scott and Allison share. “Chris said he thought you were crashing with Isaac and he only tells the truth about people’s locations when he gets that look on his face, the squinty one, and says he told them not to go there, and Deaton says you’re off work and Lydia says she doesn’t have anything scheduled with Allison! So come on, you gotta come out here and back me up because this psycho is trying to get us all killed again—”

“Derek,” Peter says, in a very calm, low voice from where he’s standing in the parking lot under the apartment’s balcony. “Derek, I realize you’re somewhat preoccupied with your latest horrific lapse in judgment, but I’d appreciate it if you could pay a _little_ attention to the raving _idiot_ that the people around here are trusting to advise them on magic—”

“I don’t actually think we can hide,” Scott mumbles from where he’s been trying to burrow himself and Derek into the pillows. He pushes himself off Derek’s back, rumpling one hand over his face, and then screws a determined expression on and starts crawling towards the edge. “Look, you stay put, I’ll see if I can take Stiles around the block to the bakery, muffins always put him in a good mood—”

“Do you _want_ to wake up to him reconstituting your mother’s corpse out of gourds?” Peter hisses.

“And if he says I’m making this up, what about the fact that I totally have him, both on _video and receipts_ , wheeling a hundred pounds of prime squash out of the garden center?” Stiles yells.

Allison snakes to the side of the bed, beating Scott, and then shakes her hair out with a heaving sigh. “We’d better just let them in, at this rate the sheriff’s going to get fed up with losing the noise complaints, even if he is Stiles’ dad,” she mutters, hunting about for her clothes. “Derek, listen, if you want, we can probably draw fire so you can sneak out the windows on the other side.”

“Yeah, Peter always follows Stiles in,” Scott says. He gets Derek’s shirt and jeans and hands them over, then goes back to looking for his own. “I’ll just text you when he finally storms out.”

“Do either of you have any idea what this is even about?” Derek says, sitting up. He runs one hand through his hair, then scoots to get his phone off the end table. No texts from Laura, about fifteen from Peter and they all start with _Do you know what he said…_

Scott and Allison look at each other, shake their heads, and then turn and shake them again at Derek. Then Scott finishes pulling on his shirt and reaches for the bedroom door. “Don’t worry about it, we’ll take care of it.”

“You don’t actually have to,” Derek says. There’s an odd, twisting sensation in his chest, definitely not irritation and not quite sharp enough for fear. He might…feel guilty about sneaking out. Even though this is, possibly, the first time in his life that somebody has ever offered to deal with his uncle for him. Laura doesn’t even do that, she just orders him out of the way and then doesn’t tell him why. “You’re not responsible for Peter.”

“Well, but Stiles is my friend and I don’t know why he keeps picking fights with your uncle. He’s really never been like this with anybody else and we’ve had to work with way worse, and I just—” Scott rubs at his face again, then gives Derek a tentative smile “—I kind of don’t want you to have any more bad associations around here?”

“Yeah, we were actually getting somewhere with that,” Allison says under her breath. She’s clearly annoyed, yanking on her jeans, and then she pauses and inhales deeply. Halfway through Stiles shouts something about the Argent Code and crimes against v-necks, and she winces. Then rolls her eyes and swings back to the bed so that she and Derek’s faces are only a few inches apart. “Just so you know, this totally is not about kicking you out. Believe me, we had a whole breakfast spread planned for this, and annoyed _everybody_ last night clearing our schedules today once we realized you were going to stay over, and we just…we’ll handle it.”

That _is_ guilt. Shit, Derek thinks, looking back at her and the little wavy lock dangling in front of her eyes, smelling her and Scott and him all mixed up on the bedsheets, and realizing that actually, he might put up with Peter in a rage for this. Shit.

“It’s fine, I’ll stay,” comes out of his mouth. Scott and Allison both take second looks at him, and the way their faces go from disbelieving to delighted—well, it wipes out the guilt in Derek’s chest, only to replace it with the beginnings of something he thinks might be even worse. “We should just sit down and figure out what the hell is their problem, anyway. This is getting ridiculous.”

Because obviously, the only time Derek makes stupider choices than when he’s guilt-stricken is when he’s in love. This town has fucked him up so much.

* * *

So Derek’s not the calmest, most sensible person. So he knows that and doesn’t deny it, and doesn’t waste his time trying to change what he provably can’t. If he learned anything from the whole debacle with Kate, it’s that when you’re weak, your biggest concern should be to limit the damage to just you.

“So why is this such a big deal?” he asks Peter, again, after bribing his uncle with three lattes from the only acceptable—per Peter—barista in town, some rare wolfsbane cultivars Allison swiped from her father’s greenhouse, and three excruciating hours letting Peter beat werewolf genealogy into his head, which is really not about passing down family wisdom so much as amusing Peter with all the tricks Derek has to pull to stay awake. “He’s a college kid who still has to text his dad when he gets back to his dorm at night. What do you care?”

Peter looks at him. Puts down the latest latte with exaggerated care, and then looks at him again. “Derek,” he says, with even more exaggerated care. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed recently, but this _kid_ is allowed—no, _encouraged_ , by the very two people who you seem to have developed a certain fondness for—”

Derek is already shoving the heel of his hand into his face, and fighting the urge to slouch right under the table. “You don’t have to dance around it like I’m a teenager, Peter. We’re having sex.”

“—to dabble in extremely risky and potent pursuits, and I’m not even talking about his so-called expertise in magic,” Peter goes on. He’s clearly upset, since he didn’t so much as twitch a brow at ‘sex,’ and normally he insists on making into innuendo anything that might have a remote chance of making Derek lose his appetite. “Just his attitude towards impersonation alone—”

“You literally pretended to be a Hollywood scout fifteen minutes ago so we could jump the line and get this table,” Derek says, gesturing to the rooftop garden around them. “We don’t even _need_ the wifi. We have unlimited data plans.”

Peter presses his lips together. He puts his hand down by his latte and for a second Derek isn’t sure whether the man’s going to get up or knock the latte into Derek’s face. Then, with a deliberately obvious effort, Peter exhales slowly. “Derek. You asked me a question. I assume that’s because you didn’t already know the answer, but if you actually believe you do, well, let’s not waste our time.”

“I’m just—look, I’m not saying you’re wrong about him.” Or that he’s right, for that matter, and sometimes Peter does teach Derek useful things. Usually not intentionally. “I’m just asking why can’t you ignore him? He might be friends with Scott and Allison, but that just means they listen to him, it doesn’t mean you have to.”

“Yes. Of course.” Peter leans back, smiling in a way that tells Derek he’s suckering someone in for the punch. “And when it comes time to choose between their plan and my advice, you’ll have absolutely no problem leaving them to their fate.”

Derek opens his mouth. Closes it, while his uncle gives him a smug confirming nod. Then resettles himself in his seat, silently chanting that getting mad over Scott and Allison is not what he got himself into this conversation to do. “That still has nothing to do with you.”

“Oh, really, nephew,” Peter drawls, still lounging back in his chair. He lifts one hand and starts examining his nails. “And obviously, when your sister asks, I’m going to tell her Derek told me he knowingly and consciously consented to dying like a fool—”

“ _I’ll_ tell her. And that’s still not what I—look, I’m just trying to figure out why he annoys you so much,” Derek snaps. “Yeah, so he’s wrong on things and you’re right. So why does _that_ bug you? I mean, if you’re right, then you’re right and you get to say I-told-you-so, so why are you still annoyed?”

Snorting, Peter pulls himself up and picks up his latte again. He takes a swig and then twists like he’s going to take out his phone and completely ignore Derek. But then he looks up again. “Annoyed?”

“Yeah, it’s not—I can tell it’s not just that he’s wrong, Peter. And I don’t even think it’s because people who you don’t care about are listening to him either, and it’s definitely not because they’re people I maybe care about,” Derek says. Something flickers through Peter’s eyes and he stops, but when the other man doesn’t say anything, he just shrugs and then throws up his hands. “The way you act about him, it’s like just seeing him makes you break out in hives or something like that—you don’t even let him talk before saying how wrong he is, and I just—I don’t see it. You don’t act like that with alphas you think are actual threats.”

“Because at least they have some kind of objective superiority. True, it might be entirely unfair and undeserved, but they have it and that has to be respected,” Peter snorts, sitting back again. “He’s annoying, Derek. Hence why I am _annoyed_.”

Derek just stops himself from rolling his eyes, since they’re actually getting somewhere. “He’s not that annoying.”

Peter lifts a brow. “Oh?”

“Well, look, he is, but not that—I’m not interested in all of that stuff anyway, of course it’s going to annoy me,” Derek mutters. He does give his face a quick rub, on the off-chance it might help with his growing headache. “Even if he’s wrong about it, he still seems interested in all the stuff you’re interested in.”

The brow’s still up, but somehow Peter’s expression has morphed from condescendingly amused to vaguely menacing. “Oh, now.”

“History. He’s always going on about some weird trivia fact he just found out about, stuff that’s not remotely important. And the magic, and…druids, he’s really interested in druids, and…” Sometimes Peter has this way of looking at Derek that makes him feel like a five-year-old who doesn’t know jack shit. And Derek knows he’s not, he’s a grown man, and he knows enough to get by, and still, as much as he tries to keep going, prove it to Peter, his skin just seems to crawl further and further away from Peter’s stare. “…and how they’re wrong about things, and—and books—old books…that you aren’t allowed to look at but do anyway…”

“Derek, I do actually have an interest in Scott and Allison staying alive,” Peter says after a second. He’s suddenly calm again. “For one, if you’re dating them, I know exactly who to blame when it goes wrong, and I still have the documents to send Chris up for homicide and tax evasion. Two, you are horribly boring when you’re depressed, and you apparently aren’t so depressed when you have a regular bedroom partner.”

“Okay. Thanks, I guess,” Derek says.

His uncle smiles, and the extra hint of canine in it clues Derek in. But he’s slow—Peter’s already grabbed his arm, and keeps tight hold of it as he leans towards Derek. “Which are _also_ the reasons why I am not going to kill you over suggesting that I have _anything_ in common with that immature, overconfident, sloppy little motormouthed _shit_ who wouldn’t know a true expert if they brained him with their Nobel Prize. Now, do we understand each other?”

* * *

“But they do have a lot in common, actually,” Allison says with a frown. She snuggles her head more deeply against Derek’s shoulder, then props her arm on his chest and starts making a list on her phone: books, history, druids, oneupmanship. “Come to think of it…”

“I didn’t get anywhere with that with Stiles either,” Scott sighs. They’re flopped over each other on the couch in Scott and Allison’s apartment, pretending to watch a movie for Scott’s depictions of Death class because Scott will go through the motions even if Stiles has already sent him a cheat sheet, and also doesn’t seem to realize how fucked-up the local college’s curriculum is. “He just called Peter a smug bastard who’s too interested in perfecting his sneer to realize he’s not even withholding the right information to get just us in trouble, instead of him and Derek.”

Derek offers Scott the bowl of popcorn. “I think the problem is neither of them actually are wrong about things.”

Scott frowns and Derek hides his grimace and gets ready to be told to get out, given how close Scott and Stiles are. But then Scott just shakes his head. “I don’t think that’s right, but it’s not…it’s not…”

“It’s not so wrong that we can just tell one of them to stop,” Allison says. She takes the popcorn, smiles at Derek in thanks, and then glances towards the screen as one of the actors clunks into frame in a full suit of armor. “It’s just, they _do_ like a lot of the same things, and why can’t they…maybe that’s it? All the stuff they both like?”

“Like we show them they can work together and maybe they’ll stop complaining about each other long enough to see that?” Scott says, perking up.

Allison’s smile is slightly straining, clearly encouraging, but not quite convinced. “Um, I think that’s getting ahead of ourselves, considering that we’ve basically been doing that for weeks now. I was more thinking along the lines of, if we just give them an opportunity to see they like the same thing when it’s not a life or death situation. You know, take the competitive element out of it.”

“I’m not sure that’s going to work,” Derek says. “Peter’s always really competitive.”

Her face falls and Derek shifts uncomfortably. Laura’s always telling him that he needs to stop crushing other people’s dreams, but usually it seems like hurting them a little up front is better than letting them get hurt a lot later. On the other hand, Allison’s been working nonstop from the get-go to try and come up with things to improve Derek’s life and she lights up so much when she thinks she’s hit on something, it’s just…it just really shows when that drops out of her face.

“Yeah, so is Stiles, but on the other hand, there’s got to be a way we can get them to enjoy the same thing in the same room without trying to one-up each other,” Scott says. He’s got that expression on his face that Derek’s coming to understand means the man’s not going to let the idea die without a fight. Which, Derek has also noticed, doesn’t necessarily speak to the quality of the idea. But Scott’s managed to revive some really, really insane ones, if you ignore whether they deserved it, and so Derek starts paying attention. “Oh, you know what? What about criticism?”

Then again, quality probably matters. Usually matters. Fine, Scott has a pretty miraculous track record of surviving what should’ve been killer ideas, literally, but that doesn’t mean Derek wants to encourage the man to keep it up. He doesn’t actually find watching people he cares about putting themselves in danger to be a turn-on, whatever Peter and Laura think. “I thought we were trying to get them away from things that encourage them to snap at each other,” Derek says. 

“Well, yeah, but that’s the idea. They won’t go after each other, they’ll go after somebody else. So they can figure out that actually they agree on more than they disagree.” For second, Scott looks happy, and then he blinks hard, winces, and starts smelling strongly of guilt. “Though they can both be pretty rough…and that’s not going to be that fair to this—”

“So we’ll just make sure we get somebody who deserves it,” Allison says, looking much more enthusiastic about the plan. Except then _she_ freezes, guilt going over her face. She takes a deep breath and looks from Scott to Derek. “I mean, I figure we’ve got enough psychos dropping by the town, right? And we’re not setting them up for torture or letting them kill or hurt people when we could stop them, we’re just…trying to find a silver lining in being a psycho magnet?”

She’s trying not to be like her aunt. She’s really not anyway; even when Kate was leading Derek on, she never bothered to reassure Derek about anything. Actually, her whole strategy was pretty much catch his attention, then lead him on by dismissing him so he’d try to prove himself—which was horribly effective and Derek already knows how much of an idiot he was for falling for it and he needs to stop thinking about that. So he can deal with the two people sitting in front of him, worried they’ve mortally offended him and it says a _lot_ that the first people since Kate who’ve been interested in him for non-homicidal reasons are guilt-tripping harder than him.

Which he’s not thinking about, so he can actually do something right when he’s got a chance. “I’m not saying it wouldn’t work. It…actually could. But I’m still just not totally sure how this is different from what we do already,” he says. “You know, we find out somebody’s doing evil things, we look into it, and then Stiles and Peter blow up at each other about how to stop them.”

“I think part of that’s because we’re always in a hurry to keep more people from dying.” Allison takes the popcorn bowl and sinks back against Derek, munching thoughtfully. Then she decides to suck some of the butter-and-salt residue out from under a fingernail. “So lower stakes, first of all,” she says, mumbling around her finger while looking up at Derek. “We do have a lull, there’s preventative stuff we’ve been putting off.”

“But how are we going to get the bad guys to help us out?” Scott says. He still looks a little concerned, but his scent says he’s just as interested in the bits of Allison’s tongue peeking out as Derek is. Then he turns to Derek, frowning, and reaches over and picks a fleck of kernel off the side of Derek’s neck. “If we’re sticking to the whole, only people who deserve it idea.”

So Scott was turned as a teenager and then had to kill his alpha and ended up being taught to werewolf by _Stiles_. So he still can’t be that clueless about what he’s doing. He’s dating Allison, _she_ knows what he’s doing, judging by the way her eyes widen and then slide furtively to Derek. And by how, when she realizes Derek’s not going to shove Scott off, she grins a little and flicks up a piece of popcorn. Which misses her mouth completely, despite her impeccable aim in every other situation, and instead hits the underside of Derek’s chin before dropping inside his shirt.

“Or we drop the villain idea and ask for volunteers. We’re not the only ones sick of them fighting all the time,” Allison says. “We only need someone to start Stiles and Peter off and we’ll make sure we’re there so it doesn’t get out of ha—oops! Sorry!”

“Got it,” Scott says, heaving himself up and over Derek and sticking his hand down Derek’s collar. He’s quick enough that the kernel only drops an inch or two, but his fingers are still on Derek’s collarbone, and his head’s still over Derek’s, and when Derek can’t quite stop himself from tipping up his chin, Scott smells _embarrassed_ about it. “Oh. Um.”

“Volunteers.” Allison sits up and takes Scott by the wrist, and removes his hand from Derek’s shirt with the kind of smile you use to smooth over a spilled drink. Then, still smiling, she eats the kernel. “They can say no, right? They can say no, we’re just asking. We’re only doing it if they’re comfortable.”

“Um,” Scott says again, his brow wrinkled, as if he vaguely realizes she’s smoothing over a hell of a lot more than awkward accidental dominance. He purses his lips, starts to say something to her, and then stops himself and turns to Derek. “Well, look, he’s your uncle and—oh, sorry, let me get back down fi—”

Look, dominance triggers are dominance triggers. Doesn’t mean that once they’ve triggered, Derek can’t think his way through things, and right now, Derek’s decided that he’s annoyed Scott smells more embarrassed than attracted. The throat thing might just be for werewolves, but Scott’s also in his goddamn lap and that’s pretty universal. “Kind of a waste of getting up then.”

Scott pauses. Frowns again, sniffs, and then—actually goes down for the kiss. That’s probably the weirdest thing about him, he’s so _careful_ about checking first whether Derek’s okay, but once he’s convinced about it, he does go for it. Really go for it. As in Allison actually ends up grabbing Scott by the nape and—and _scruffing_ him, literally, to break them up so she can squeeze in some lube before they resort to buttery fingers. Which, to be honest, is also a turn-on, and Derek really does not give a shit whether that’s werewolf or human or idiotic.

“Okay, I guess if we all agree, it can’t hurt,” Scott mumbles into Derek’s back later. “But let me talk to Dr. Deaton, all right?”

Allison stops playing with Derek’s hair and her heart thumps up through the breast he’s resting his ear on. “I didn’t—”

“Yeah, I know, but I think it’s pretty clear it’s either him or your dad, since my mom and Stiles’ dad would just want to give them a talk,” Scott sighs. He reaches around Derek and pats Allison on the arm. “I just want to make sure he doesn’t agree because he still feels guilty about—well, um, about—”

“About my family?” Derek says. He’d been listening, kind of, but in the offhand way of somebody hoping somebody else will handle the whole thing for them. Which is stupid, and he knows better, and…he’s had about three conversations with Dr. Deaton since he came back, all of which weren’t _hostile_ , but which definitely didn’t give Derek the impression the man wanted to re-associate himself with the Hales any time soon. Although come to think of it, Peter had been in the room for all the talks, loudly admiring various pieces of weaponry. “I think that’s his problem if he is. I mean, look, what happened to them, happened. It’s not like it makes much of a difference now.”

For some reason, that doesn’t sit well with Allison. She slides her hand around to the side of Derek’s face, tilting it for a better look, and then, when he shifts to accommodate her, she frowns past him at Scott. The other man’s quiet and his heartbeat’s doing that slow skip where he’s obviously having thoughts he’s trying to hide, but in the end, he just bends down and snugs his nose and mouth behind Derek’s ear. He and Allison both smell happier when Derek lets out a sluggish groan.

“I’ll talk to him, make sure he knows why we’re doing this,” Scott promises. “We’ll make sure nothing goes wrong.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Derek, Scott, and Allison are watching _The Seventh Seal_.


	3. Chapter 3

Derek isn’t even sure why Scott’s worried about guilt over Derek’s family, considering Alan Deaton clearly thinks Scott is some kind of prophesied second coming of alphas, and that alone is enough to get him to sign onto the plan. Anyway, Derek doesn’t care about some druid he never met till he came back to town. What Derek cares about is getting Peter to show up at the exact time and place when Deaton suggests they wheel out giant tin tubs and mock-drown people in order to talk to the remains of the Nemeton and figure out why it’s so enthusiastic about the recent trend of vegetally-inclined villains.

One of the most annoying parts of the Stiles/Peter competition is how they’re invading Derek’s head. Somehow, he’s starting to think like _both_ of them.

“Well, I think at this point nobody can deny that pumpkins are central to whatever is affecting the telluric currents,” Deaton says, with impressive mildness considering the size of the book Peter’s holding near his head. “They’re the only connecting thread between the coven we were dealing with when you first arrived, the brujah, that novice necromancer, and this latest suspect.”

“I don’t believe anybody _is_ denying that. But what I fail to see is how a ritual to contact a Nemeton is going to aid us when the entity these people are worshipping prefers the form of a vegetable,” Peter snaps. He slams the book down on the table in front of Deaton, looks miffed when Deaton just reaches out a foot and stops the table from rolling away, and then starts to flip through it. “They aren’t even in the same genus—oh, let me guess, reinforcements? Really, I don’t see the point of calling these meetings if we’re just going to be outvoted anyway.”

“Because I don’t know, we’re caring and benevolent people who’d like you to be well-informed about what’s going on, even though you don’t patrol the borders or look after anything, and just generally couldn’t care less about this place?” Stiles snorts, coming in with Scott and Allison on his heels. He pauses, cocks his head, and then laughs as he swings his bag off his shoulder. “Wow, I’m impressed. An actual _book_ from Mr. Too-Good-For-Traditional-Media.”

Peter rolls his eyes. “Taking advance of technology when it’s available to be used isn’t snobbery, it’s plain good archivist behavior. I’m not going to turn up my nose at a resource just because of the package it comes in.”

“Oh? Says the guy who didn’t want to use my laptop because it smelled funny,” Stiles says as he starts pulling out books from his bag.

“Your laptop smelled like incompletely distilled wolfsbane, and excuse me if I’d rather not expose myself to a night of vomiting up my guts in the bath…” Starting off strong, Peter’s contempt trails off as one of Stiles’ books slides off the messy stack Stiles is making on the table corner and lands in front of him. He puts his hand on it, then hesitates. Then he flips it open.

Stiles notices and belatedly drops the rest of the books. “Hey! Did I say—”

“You’re researching alternative ways to communicate with a Nemeton?” Peter says, paging through the book.

“Well, yeah.” Still looking suspicious, Stiles fidgets with the other books. Then he sort of sidles up to Peter, making little aborted darts at the one Peter’s reading with his hand while trying to have a conversation around Peter with Deaton. “I mean, listen, Doctor, I totally respect the fact that you’ve been doing this for years and years and I’m just speaking from the equivalent of a master’s self-study course but, um. Drowning. This seems like somewhere we could—we could—do better—”

Peter finally looks up at him. Raises an eyebrow as he tilts his hands this way and that, moving the book just enough so that Stiles’ fingertips miss it every time. “Oh?”

Derek suddenly catches a whiff of excitement and looks past them to Scott, who blinks hard and then winces, just as Allison hastily claps a charm-wrapped hand to his shoulder. The scent immediately goes away and Scott smooths out his face…for all of a second, and then he gives Derek the world’s least furtive furtive thumbs-up. He’s the most ridiculous alpha Derek has ever met, and yet—weirdly, Derek can kind of see why Deaton would put so much trust in the guy. He really just wants everything to work out.

“Yeah, oh. What, did you want to demonstrate how that good ol’ werewolf healing handles oxygen deprivation?” Stiles snorts. He makes another grab for the book.

Peter moves the book to one hand and swings it out on his far side, so Stiles can’t reach it without going around him. “I’m sure you’d love that,” he says, using the kind of amused tone that means he’s still considering disembowelment. “You’re _so_ devoted to werewolf studies, after all.”

For a second Stiles stares at Peter. He looks confused and not just hostile, and Derek…sighs as Stiles rolls his eyes and stomps around Peter and hops up to clumsily drape over Peter’s arm, his feet dangling a good two inches off the ground, for the sole purpose of getting the book back. “Sure, yeah, so—you gonna admit—we should just go with—with the bonfire—”

“We already have people attempting to raise literal hell that way.” Peter lowers his arm, gives it a disdainful shake, and then irritably shoves Stiles off of it when that doesn’t work. “Why on earth would I want to do their work for them?”

“Oh, for—it’s not doing their work! I don’t know how many times I have to explain this to you, sympathetic magic isn’t the same as summoning!” Stiles snaps. He stumbles backward with his book, then hastily thumbs through it as a disappointed Scott steadies him from behind. “And as far as not encouraging the cultists go, it’s a lot better than your idea about making our own deal with an ancient demon! I mean, honestly, if we’re gonna pick our poisons like that, I think I’d rather go with the drowning.”

“Okay!” Allison claps her hands, then smiles so hard Derek thinks he can hear her jaw popping when everyone else turns towards her. “No drowning today, sounds like we’ve all got more research to do first.”

“I do have a surgery to prep for,” Deaton adds when Stiles looks like he wants to argue about more research being needed. Which possibly is the most helpful thing he’s said so far.

“Let’s just postpone this till we’ve got the facts we need to make a call, all right?” Allison adds. She smiles impossibly harder, and then pulls out her trump card. “Whatever we decide, we need to make sure Scott’s mom and my dad and _your_ dad—” she eyes a suddenly hunching Stiles “—okay it anyway. So let’s take the time and get it right.”

* * *

“Let’s talk about what you’re doing wrong, Derek,” Peter says, leaning over the kitchen counter.

Derek startles, because werewolf senses aren’t the same as having a limitless attention span and he was already trying to cook stir-fry and keep one ear on the evening news playing in the living room for any unexpected dead bodies and text Allison and Scott back at the same time. And he was doing pretty well at that, actually.

“I thought you didn’t want me to burn the food again,” he mutters, hastily yanking the wok off the flame. And then just as hastily dropping it on the counter, because also, werewolf healing isn’t the same as burn-proof skin.

Which he should know, for fuck’s sake. He stares at the wok for a good two minutes, flexing his hand while the blisters flake off and the skin grows back, and then registers Peter clearing his throat. From the look on Peter’s face, it isn’t the first throat-clearing either, but oddly, Peter doesn’t immediately launch into one of his rants about Derek’s many faults. He just…puts out a hand—wearing an oven mitt, because Peter never forgets things like that—and steadies the wok before it clatters off the counter and makes their dinner irretrievable instead of blackened. Then he stoops over it and sniffs.

“Look, I know it’s not remotely authentic, but this is the version I can cook,” Derek says. “So either we go with the fake Chinese or we see all the ways I can get complicated ingredients burned onto steel.”

“Actual authentic stirfry ingredients aren’t complicated, they’re just fresher and less preprocessed for those who don’t care to learn how to prep their food properly,” Peter says, which is pretty mild for him. He’s still eyeing Derek oddly, as if he might actually be considering _not_ having this conversation about what’s bothering him. But it’s Peter, so…“I wasn’t referring to your cooking anyway.”

Derek knows from past experience that if Peter’s holding his fire, it’s so the explosion will be bigger. So he gets out some bowls and slides one along the counter towards the other man. “Well, then help yourself.”

Peter’s mouth twitches. He’s in a really weird mood if he’s actually finding Derek amusing—not that that makes him any more likely to go for the bait and blow up early at Derek and just get it out of the way. “Oh, I’ll pass, thank you. I have an appointment to access a private collection in two hours and I’ll just pick up something on the way. Which, by the way, _is_ what I was referring—”

“Look, I know you’re right, I just figured if we didn’t go, Deaton would do it anyway and we should at least show up and tell him no before somebody got hurt,” Derek says, filling up his own bowl. The food isn’t completely burnt, and there’s not enough left in the fridge to start over without a trip to the supermarket, and at this point he’s just too tired. He doesn’t need his food to taste good; he just needs it to fill his stomach enough that hunger pangs don’t keep him up. “So now he’s not, and you can tell everybody how we’re going to do it, and we should be fine, right?”

“Up until that spastic excuse for a resident nuisance interrupts me with his badly-sourced references,” Peter says. His tone’s more sarcastic than angry. He tilts his head, then shakes it as he backs up to the fridge. “Does it really bother McCall that much that we’re not all holding hands and skipping through the woods together?”

Derek opted for chopsticks over a fork, and he’s glad about that, since jabbing the inside of his mouth with their tips is painful, but not as bad as metal tines would be. “What? What does Scott even have to do with this?”

“Well, you can’t actually expect me to believe that the Argent girl came up with this,” Peter snorts, taking out some juice. Then he crosses back behind Derek to get a glass from the cabinet. “That seems like too much of a fantastical stretch, even with her family background.”

“Came up with what,” Derek says flatly.

His uncle pauses with the cabinet half-open, then twists his head around and looks Derek up and down. “Are you offended on her behalf?”

Derek opens his mouth. Closes it. Stabs mindlessly at his food with the chopsticks, because even if it weren’t Peter he was talking to, there’s obviously no answer here that doesn’t leave him feeling like he fucked up something, whether it’s about Allison or his dead family or his ongoing problem with bad life choices.

“I’m actually interested, you know,” Peter says after another second of silence. He picks out a glass and closes the cabinet, then turns fully around. “It’s been a couple weeks, long enough for the novelty to wear off, and you’re more of an impulsive idiot than a deliberate one, unless this is somehow an elaborate way of punishing yourself for—”

“I’m sleeping with her,” Derek says, just to cut the other man off.

Peter rolls his eyes. “Ah, modern romance is so…lacking in sweet nothings. Yes, Derek. Obviously. And even more obviously, you’re still trying to make me like Stiles, who you are _not_ sleeping with.”

“I’m not trying to—” tactical error, Derek realizes he’s admitting he was up to something, and then he just gives up and throws himself into his mistake “—it’s not about making you like him, it’s just about making it so we don’t have to worry about you two murdering each other every time we have to have a meeting.”

“Oh, honestly, nephew.” Shaking his head again, Peter pours himself the juice and then swigs at it. Then he wiggles the glass condescendingly at Derek. “You should know me better than that. I’m not going to _kill_ him.”

Derek directs his snort towards his food. “Gross bodily injury’s not really that much better, Peter.”

“Because either way, your budding relationship with McCall and Argent would be ruined?” Peter says. He drinks the rest of his juice, watching Derek, and then, oddly, he looks aggravated. “You have to be one of the most perversely stubborn—why you’ll tell everybody you’re sleeping with them but won’t admit that you care for them—”

“I don’t tell everybody that, and what do you care anyway?” Derek snaps. Then he puts down the bowl and chopsticks, because at this rate he’s going to stab himself right through the cheek and he doesn’t want to spend the night picking out splinters so that can heal up right. “Because if it’s about letting them in on family secrets or something like that, I’m not going to. And I don’t bring them here, or let them anywhere near your things or you without telling you, so if anything goes wrong it’ll just be me involved.”

“Of course, because it’s not as if we’re _werewolves_ or _blood relations_ ,” Peter says, voice suddenly sharp. He even takes a step towards Derek, and then makes an annoyed noise as he pulls himself back. One of his hands goes up and runs through his hair, then pulls on it as he grimaces, obviously trying to hold in his temper. “Let’s get one thing straight, Derek. If you die and they are in _any_ way responsible, your sister and I will invoke a vendetta on them and anyone associated with them.”

Derek—Derek believes him. And it’s not just because Peter actually enjoys being vengeful, or because Peter wouldn’t mind having an excuse to start going after the Argents again. It’s because suddenly a cold hand grips the inside of his chest and twists and you don’t survive as a werewolf this long by ignoring those kinds of instincts.

You don’t survive as a werewolf as long as Peter without knowing how to scent out that kind of fear, either. “Oh, for…please tell me you aren’t thinking about breaking up with them just because it’ll stop me from taking my revenge,” Peter says, putting up his hand again. He rubs at one eye, then sighs and looks at Derek. “First of all, you self-sacrificing moron, it’ll just guarantee I go after them, because you’ll be depressed again and your lack of judgment will be even more pronounced. And when you inevitably get yourself killed, I’ll be able to trace a direct line of causation back to—”

“Okay, fine,” Derek snarls. “You _want_ me to stay with them?”

Peter starts to answer, then stops himself. He stands back and stares at Derek for a while, and when Derek starts shifting uncomfortably, he…doesn’t take the opportunity to shave off a little more of Derek’s self-esteem. No, he just keeps staring, with the oddest expression on his face, surprised and offended—not so odd—mixed in with what looks a lot like regret. Or at least recognition that things didn’t turn out quite how Peter wanted them to, and it _is_ odd to see that on Peter without also seeing him be bitter about it. If anything, he almost looks…sad.

“You were a nuisance of a child,” Peter finally says. He glances down at his glass, raises an eyebrow upon finding it empty, and then makes a move towards the fridge, only to abruptly change direction. Instead he goes and rinses his glass out in the sink. “Shockingly, you do seem to have grown out of it. And I do have interests besides watching you be miserable, Derek.”

“What, watching me be happy?” Derek says, blinking. Then he remembers who they are and snorts. “With an Argent?”

“Well, if you ever convinced me that you were capable of it,” Peter shrugs. After wiping out the glass, he deposits it in the dishwasher and then kind of fussily folds up the towel before hanging it back on its bar. “Allison’s family obviously wouldn’t be my first choice, and I’m certainly not going to swear her father is off-limits for all time, but then, I would’ve thought you’d have more issues with her.”

Derek grimaces. “Yeah, well, I don’t think about the consequences, like you keep telling me.”

Peter looks at Derek again. “I decided a while ago that slow is far more satisfying when it comes to vengeance, and the expression on Chris’s face whenever his daughter asks how you’re feeling hasn’t yet lost its novelty,” he says after another second, with more of his usual casual contempt. “And I’ll admit that’s partly due to having the time to explore different flavors of revenge, rather than being trapped in a hospital. So there’s really no difference in risk whether you stay with them or not, at least where I’m concerned.”

That sounds like he’s trying to reassure Derek. Which is—is weird. And when Derek stares at Peter, Peter shifts his shoulders in a rare sign of discomfort and that—that means it’s real, which makes it even weirder.

“On the other hand, I really don’t see why dating McCall and the Argent girl requires you to work on Stiles’ behalf,” Peter adds.

“Because I’m not. I don’t care about Stiles, all right? He annoys me too,” Derek says. He’s so relieved to be back to familiar bickering that he actually forgets to be irritated at Peter. “I just want you two to stop—I get that you think he’s going to get us killed, but honestly, you yell at each other so much the rest of us might as well just kill ourselves, it takes so long before we actually _do_ anything.”

Understanding suddenly dawns in Peter’s eyes. “ _Ah_ ,” he says, snapping his fingers. “Well, you could’ve just said so, Derek. I’m really not that unreasonable.”

Something is terribly wrong. Derek starts to ask what that is, then hesitates because that might just flush it out into the open.

“If we’re eating into your time for romancing the Argent girl and an alleged true alpha, by all means, I’ll relocate the discussion next time,” Peter continues in an airy, dismissive tone, walking out of the kitchen. “You’re right. No need for you to see what I’m up to, anyway.”

Fuck. Derek puts his face in his hands. Takes a deep breath, fights down the urge to stab his claws in, and then lowers his hands and takes out his phone.

* * *

 _“Yeah, agreed, sounds like Peter’s going to murder the poor guy,”_ Laura says.

Considering Stiles is his best friend and the person he credits with helping him learn control after being bitten, Scott takes that with surprising calm. “I, um, I actually think Stiles can take care of himself,” he says into the phone Derek is holding. “I’m kind of more worried that he just might do something before he thinks and get them both into trouble.”

“Like the time we were trapped by those lizardmen and he sprayed them with liquid nitrogen,” Allison nods. “I mean, it worked, they froze in place, but then we almost suffocated too.”

Derek can sense his sister mulling that over, not in a good way. “Laura and I need to—” he mumbles.

“Oh, yeah, sure, we’ll just go over—” Scott starts to point and then frowns “—okay, no, I’ll still be able to hear, um, maybe if I go stand in the boiler room—”

 _“God, stay put, Derek just wants to ask if I think he’s lost his mind dating you, and the answer’s I am honestly not sure, but I’m also seven months pregnant so you’ve got two months to convince everybody he hasn’t,”_ Laura says in an exasperated tone. She grunts and then flops down on something cushy-sounding with a sigh of relief. _“One, you’re not dead yet, so I assume Peter doesn’t think you’re that dangerous, and Peter would know. Two, why don’t you just let them work out their aggression? That’s the whole problem, isn’t it? The posturing?”_

Allison tilts her head and offers Derek a slightly strained but still sympathetic smile. “Well, but I don’t think we can just let them fight it out. I mean, the idea’s to lower the chances that we have to break into the morgue again…”

 _“Why are you breaking into the morgue? Even Peter gets his—look, never mind, I don’t want to know, as long as my brother and uncle are whole and happy, those are my priorities,”_ Laura says. The slightest rasp of gritted teeth comes over the line, just enough that Derek can guess which be-a-better-alpha mantra she’s trying to silently chant. _“That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is, wear them out on something else, so they don’t have the energy for a pissing contest, and then you get them talking to each other.”_

“I thought we tried to do that,” Derek says.

Allison shakes her head, then smiles at Derek as if she is genuinely worried he might take offense at that. “Well, not exactly. We tried to give them a mutual target, but they were still coming in fresh.”

“I thought we were trying to keep down who else got hurt,” Scott says, and unusually only looks half-reassured when Allison puts her arm around him and kisses his cheek. On the other hand, he also looks like he isn’t coming up with any better ideas. “Also, it does take a lot to wear Stiles out. A _lot_.”

That gives Allison pause too, and the two of them start to look really stressed out. And they don’t even really need to do this, they obviously were fine before Derek and Peter came back to town, but they just keep trying anyway and there goes the guilt again. “I,” Derek starts. He pauses, thinks about what he’s doing, and then goes on. “I might have an idea.”

Guilt gives him bad ideas, but it does usually give him ideas. Go figure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Derek and Peter plotting to kill each other gets old, and makes you wonder why don't either of them just buy a gun and source some wolfsbane bullets. Derek and Peter floundering at trying to take care of each other when neither of them is naturally that empathetic is a lot more interesting to me.
> 
> The problem with spraying around liquid nitrogen indiscriminately is that that stuff vaporizes into nitrogen gas at room temperature, which displaces the oxygen in the air, which means you can suffocate on it. So yeah, ventilation. This is something to consider.


	4. Chapter 4

The one built-in safety measure on Derek’s terrible idea is it requires Chris Argent to agree to be involved, and he figures Chris will see right through the holes.

He’s not wrong about that, but he is apparently wrong about Chris’ risk tolerance. “I am this close to sho—to stepping in with those two anyway,” Chris mutters, stuttering slightly and then eyeing Allison, who smiles and acts as if she didn’t just stomp her father’s foot. “Anyway, we need the hands. It’s not like that patch is getting any smaller.”

“Plus I really think this should keep anybody from getting hurt. There are plenty of them so Stiles and Peter can both take care of them this way, and they’re just pumpkins, after all,” Scott says.

Thirty minutes later, Derek throws himself behind a fallen log. He goes down so fast that his bent arm bangs into the center of his chest, knocking the breath out of him. Grunting and gasping, he flattens out. Shouts and wet, heavy-sounding thumps continue to go on all around him.

When his breathing’s evened some, he twists onto his back and immediately regrets it as some shards of pumpkin fly over the log and smash into a nearby tree. They leave a sticky, bloody trail behind them on the trunk, which smells even worse than it looks. Derek turns away and then jerks in his legs just as Chris comes pelting over the top of the log to join him. 

The other man’s scent spikes with aggression when he realizes who he’s hiding with. His hand twitches around his gun and Derek sinks his claws into the ground, bracing himself, because yeah, obviously, he’s known all along that dealing with the Argents again was going to blow up in his face and—

“ _Hah_!” comes a triumphant shout from Stiles, right on the heels of a loud squish-and-whoosh noise that makes Derek wince. “Take that, evil gourds! You think we’re gonna put up with this? You think the worst we can do to you is gut you and carve happy witch faces into your sides? Well, you thought wrong!”

Chris twitches. Then grimaces, which really looks as if it’s only to cover up his eye-roll, and squirms around till he can get a cloth out of his pocket. He snaps out the clip on his gun and checks that the firing chamber’s empty, then starts scrubbing pumpkin pulp off the barrel. “I _told_ them stop stealing from the school lab,” he mutters, not looking at Derek. “None of them are even taking chemistry this semester. I don’t know how the hell his father’s going to pass this one off on the regents and I can’t just keep threatening them, Jesus.”

Derek sniffs the air. “Molotov cocktails again?” he says.

“No, some kind of instant acid bath stuff. At least, if it’s what Stiles was muttering about when my daughter was trying to distract me with clip-loading,” Chris says. He shakes a last piece of pulp out of his gun, puts the parts back together, and then checks something. “Nobody’s burning up the goddamn woods again. Not while I’m living here.”

“Would you watch where you’re spraying that?” Peter yells. “ _Some_ of us would appreciate it if we didn’t have mutant deer on top of malicious vegetable patches, you know.”

The whooshing cuts off with clearly offended sharpness. “Hey, I thought you had, I don’t know, a superior sense of smell or whatever? So you’d know this isn’t like radioactive ectoplasm or whatever, it’s just—” 

“Pumpkin! Pumpkin! With teeth!” Scott shouts.

Peter snarls and there are some scrambling noises. Enough that Derek starts to poke his head over the log to see what he can do, but just as he catches sight of an enormous, faintly-glowing pumpkin with very functional-looking jagged teeth, Peter calls out something in one of those random old languages he knows and the pumpkin—explodes. Derek drops back behind the log.

“You know, I hear that pumpkin has tons of AHAs, totally great for anti-wrinkle treatment,” Stiles snickers. “If we’re gonna go the route where you have to be pretty much on top of it and can’t hide behind a handy splash shield.”

“As opposed to converting a necromantic summoning site to a hazardous waste dump?” Peter snaps.

“They’re still going,” Derek says, blinking.

“Yeah.” Chris arches a brow when Derek jumps—okay, so Derek forgot the man was there, so Chris is the product of generations of people focused on figuring out how to outthink werewolves and they’re in the middle of a battle and _shut up_ —but then twists around to take a look himself at the clearing. “Hell. We’re running out of pumpkins and they still don’t look like they’re having fun.”

On the one hand, these are blood-filled, malicious pumpkins who have been slowly developing intelligence as well as the ability to not only use their vines to trap and kill animals, but to also move around. And basically, no matter how you stop them, they explode on you. Shoot them, smash them with a shovel, hit them with acid or magic—they explode. Every. Single. Time. 

On the other…shit. “Is one of them doing any better than the other?”

“Looks pretty even to me,” Chris says after a second. “The magic handles more of them at the same time, but Stiles can fire off that acid faster than Peter can chant.”

“Shit,” Derek mutters. He glances over the log again, hearing Scott and Allison desperately trying to redirect Stiles and Peter’s attention to the few remaining pumpkins. “Honestly, can we just concentrate on we’re killing them?”

“—realize you’re just going to take this as affirmation than you can continue your shoddy experimental protocols, with _no_ thought about the fact that you don’t own this property, nor are you going to be stuck explaining why you need the permits to relocate a few tons of topsoil to a secured biohazard processing facility—”

“—excuse me, you are speaking to the son of the sheriff who’s been handling all the press conferences due to the fact that you can’t be bothered to come up with an actual _alibi_ , no, you just think you’re so charming nobody notices your research when actually they all remember you and now the FBI’s investigating a potential new cult—”

Chris sighs. Checks his gun one last time, then twists and slaps at Derek’s head. Derek snarls, realizes what the man’s really doing, and claps his hands over his ears so that Chris can aim over his left shoulder and shoot a small pumpkin trying to scuttle off into the woods. The thing about werewolf healing a lot of people don’t get is that healing _hurts_. Especially burst eardrums.

So yeah, Derek gives Chris a little bit of a funny look when he comes up. It’s one thing to shoot a common enemy, another thing to be that considerate of Derek while doing it. Chris doesn’t seem to register it and just shrugs as he gets to his feet. “I guess it wasn’t a bad idea, but I don’t think that the problem’s really about which one of them is right about how to fight off things. We get rid of all the pumpkins, they’ll probably start arguing about who’s supposed to bring the coffee to pack meetings.”

“Pack meetings?” Derek says.

Maybe a little sharply, since that finally earns him a measuring glance from Chris. “Well, you’ve been showing up every week, even if Peter’s kicking and screaming,” he says. He takes aim at another fleeing pumpkin, and then moves aside so that Derek, having spotted a third, can chunk a rock into it. “Admit I wasn’t thinking you’d keep it up this long. I haven’t even gotten a call from Laura.”

“Laura’s busy,” Derek says curtly. Neither he nor Peter are sure how closely the Argents have been keeping tabs on their family—he knows Allison hasn’t, but she’s the first to admit her father still doesn’t tell her everything—and if they haven’t found out about Laura’s pregnancy, well, Derek’s not going to invite them to the baby shower.

Chris opens his mouth, reconsiders what he was going to say, and then visibly adjusts his stance to be less confrontational. Actually, he looks sort of pained. “Derek, I’m pretty sure I haven’t threatened you lately. Or Peter. And telling him to not bother Scott’s mom with his ‘accidental’ corpses doesn’t count.”

“Look, I talked to him about that, he dumps them with me now, and anyway I think she scared him a lot more than either of us,” Derek immediately says, and then he registers the rest of what Chris is saying. “What?”

“My daughter really likes you,” Chris says. He doesn’t exactly choke, but he definitely looks as if those are words he wasn’t looking forward to saying. He pauses for a deep breath, too, before he goes on. “She’s made that _very_ clear, and at this point, she…she’s more than earned the right to say how she wants to live her life, and who she wants in it. I can’t help being her father, but—”

“But you’ll kill me if I hurt her?” Derek says.

That flicker of exasperation goes over Chris’ face again. “Well, yeah, obviously.” He pauses again. “But it’ll be because you hurt her, not because you’re a werewolf, or because of our families, or anything like that.”

For a moment Derek isn’t sure how to respond, just like he still doesn’t really know what to say when Allison apologizes to him about what her aunt did. Sure, it’s—it’s nice to hear that, he guesses. It sort of helps soothe those moments when he looks in the mirror and wonders if his stupid choices are going to end up getting more of his family hurt again, and he does still worry about that, even though the only one with him is Peter and Peter is the absolute last person who’s going to let Derek drag him down. But it’s not like he’s ever planned on going a rampage against the Argents anyway. That was Peter’s thing and that made Peter feel better and Laura feel safer, but to be completely honest, all hearing about the Argents’ suffering ever did was remind Derek of how he got that ball rolling in the first place.

So Allison saying sorry to him, or Chris basically informing him they’ve got a truce, it’s great and all but it doesn’t exactly get at what still bothers Derek in the middle of the night. But look, it’s a big deal for a hunter family like theirs and it’s a good thing for his remaining family and Derek can see all of that. “Okay. Thanks. I mean, I get what you’re saying.”

“I’m saying it’s up to Scott and Allison how they want to treat you, and they invited you to those meetings,” Chris says after a long stare at Derek. Then the sound of Stiles’ and Peter’s bickering reaches them again and he almost reaches up with his gunhand towards his face. Grimacing, he gives the field a quick glance, then holsters the gun and starts rubbing at his nose. “Also, they did that knowing Stiles and your uncle don’t get along, and hell, even Stiles isn’t trying to break you up and if he thought—anyway, Derek. My point is, what’s eating those two has nothing to do with anything but them.”

“Well, okay,” Derek says, because it seems like Chris is expecting him to say something. “But that—what does that—that doesn’t really help in getting them to stop.”

“Jesus, I know,” Chris mumbles into his hand. He looks over at Stiles and Peter, who now are…are arguing over splatter patterns because apparently, they need to figure out whose method was more destructive when the vampire pumpkins are _dead_ , so who cares. “Look, honestly, I don’t even know at this point. I just—I just want you to know, I’m also trying real hard not to—”

Derek shrugs. “If you want to shoot him, I get that. Don’t actually shoot Peter, that just makes him worse, but if that’s what you feel like all the time…I get where you’re coming from there.”

For a second Chris almost looks sympathetic. “Yeah.”

They stare at Stiles and Peter, in that awkward silence of people who know they need to walk up and interrupt, but who are still semi-hopeful somebody else might do it first. Which is when Allison, her scent completely masked by the amount of pumpkin gore sticking to her rubber boots, speaks from behind them. “I really didn’t want to go this way,” she says. Smiles and waits for them to recover, and then resumes looking reluctant but determined. “I really didn’t. But I really don’t see any other choice at this point.”

* * *

First they clean up the remains of the pumpkin patch. Then they check in with Scott’s mom and Stiles’ dad for medical treatment and cover-up coordination, and _then_ Derek makes sure Peter goes off to their Airbnb to finish ranting. He’d go too, except that he knows Peter will claim the sole shower and he’d like to get rotting gourd crap off of himself some time tonight and Scott’s offering to let him use theirs.

And then Scott helps pick pulp out of his hair, and…that ends up with Derek getting fucked up against the shower wall, before the two of them stumble out into the bedroom where Allison has towels and a small request to get eaten out for letting them go first. Which Derek can do, and okay, after all of _that_ , Allison explains.

“Lydia,” she says.

“Lydia?” Derek mumbles. “Your friend who thought Peter was an ambulance chaser and I looked like that serial killer?”

Scott stops nuzzling at the side of Allison’s neck to frown down. “I thought we explained to her.”

“We did,” Allison tells him, and then nudges Derek till he rolls over and she can climb up to straddle his waist. His dick had been starting to prep for round two, thanks to how Scott kept rocking his thigh between Derek’s legs, but Derek hadn’t been going to point that out till after Allison got a shower. Which she’s putting off, going by how she grins and playfully tugs his cock up to rub against her clit. “And Stiles is getting so bad even she’s been asking when we’re going to do something, so I don’t think it’ll be hard to convince her.”

“She is?” Now Scott looks concerned. “What’s Stiles been doing?”

“Oh, I think just bugging her whether she can help him one-up Peter. You know, lots of late-night DMs where he really needs her to translate something or find this obscure reference so he’s got a snappy comeback,” Allison says, with the kind of artificial cheerfulness that Derek is starting to recognize as her trying to pretend she isn’t actually holding down an apocalypse all by herself.

She helps the impression along by smoothing her hands up Derek’s chest and leaning over to go for a kiss with Scott, who…lets her, but who then shifts back to give her another look. Because contrary to what everybody thinks, the guy’s not blindly in love; he just really is okay with how Allison is, all the time, in all situations. Doesn’t mean he can’t read her.

“Is she already doing something?” Scott asks. “No, seriously. If she’s annoyed, then—”

“Not _yet_.” Allison pouts a little, but it’s half-hearted and she seems to be giving up on that even as her lower lip pushes out. She sits back and absently pushes the hair back from her face. “No, okay, but she’s definitely going to if we don’t ask her, and you know how Lydia gets when she thinks we should’ve asked her sooner, and it’s Derek’s uncle—”

Scott makes a face. “I really wish he hadn’t hit on her mom.”

“He wasn’t really interested,” Derek interrupts. When they look at him, he can’t help shifting his shoulders against the bed. Then he just—mans up and grabs hold of the headboard with one hand, and starts to pull himself out from under the other two. “Scott, you could smell—Peter was just pissed off because Lydia came in on Stiles’ side with that argument, and anyway, I can—”

“No, no, stay. We don’t have to talk to anybody tonight,” Allison says, her eyes widening. She makes a grab for Derek’s shoulders, misses, and then goes for clamping her thighs around Derek, while Scott takes Derek’s arm. “Way better if we don’t, actually. We have to get our proposal together if we’re going to talk to Lydia, otherwise this is all going to go—it could go—”

“Weird. Well, I mean. Not hurtful weird, I think. She’s not that bad. Usually.” Scott being Scott, he tries for a good two seconds longer than anybody else to sound convincing. Then he sighs and scratches at the side of his face with his free hand. “Stiles is her friend too, I can talk her around.”

“Yeah, it’s not like she’s going to get Peter killed,” Allison adds earnestly. “We’ll make that clear. And she can be kind of nasty but we’ll—we’ll…we’ll talk to her about that too.”

The way they’re grabbing at him, it’s almost like they think they’ve just scared him off, or are about to, which is…okay, so Derek has had all of five minutes’ worth interacting with Lydia, most of which was her threatening Peter with various bizarre banshee-specific threats, but he’s been up against worse. He’s not really that worried about Peter either, considering Peter’s reaction to that had been to go home and start looking up banshees so he could make snide comments to Stiles about glamours and harpy relations or whatever. When Peter’s insults get that complicated, Derek makes it a point to not pay attention.

Anyway, they just generally seem to be putting in a lot of effort into this and Derek—he honestly does not get that. He hasn’t understood it this entire time and he’s tried his damnedest to not let it nag at him, to just enjoy what he’s actually got for once, but it does bother him. He doesn’t get it, and they keep doing it, and deep down he can’t convince himself that they won’t wake up some day and realize they don’t get it either. Which means that in the end, he can’t just wait for that to happen.

“Look, is it really worth all the trouble?” he asks. “It’s nice of you to offer, I’m not saying that, but we’ve tried twice—I’ve talked to Peter a _lot_ , and he just doesn’t like Stiles, and I just…why are you trying so hard to make them be friendly? It’s not like you have to.”

“Well, but it just doesn’t seem fa—” Scott starts.

Derek knows exactly where the other man’s going with that. “And if it’s about my family, I’m—you weren’t even involved—” he glimpses Allison’s face out of the corner of his eye “—and anyway, look, there are probably other ways besides dragging everybody into it when it’s really just Peter hates the world.”

“We’re not dragging people into it, and I’ll admit I don’t know him that well, but it doesn’t seem like he hates _everyone_ ,” Allison says, her tone suddenly firming up. She’s still straddling Derek and when he looks at her, she takes advantage of his distraction to pull herself further up him, so that her head is higher than his. Her hands come up to cradle his face but she’s still—still pretty much taking the alpha position on this. “He definitely doesn’t hate you, and since we don’t either, we want both of you to feel—to at least feel comfortable here.”

“I—” _really don’t think you know Peter_ , Derek is about to say.

Except before he can, Scott jumps in on it too. “It’s _not_ a hassle,” he says. “It’s we care about you and no matter what you say, them fighting all the time obviously bothers you—”

“Well, Stiles is your best friend, and Peter’s—probably not going to try and kill him at this point, but it’s Peter and probably,” Derek says, shrugging. Feeling a little defensive at this point, although speaking of _probably_ , probably not as much as he should, what with both of them leaning over him. It’s just—just he kind of wants them to make him stay, even if he knows better, and they’re kind of good at making him. “And I know I’m just—”

Allison’s jaw tightens, and for a crazy moment she looks just like her father. “I really, really hope you’re not about to say you’re just a fling.”

“Nope,” Derek says, with complete honesty.

She doesn’t believe him. Or, she believes he’s telling the truth, but she doesn’t believe that can be the truth, says the puzzled frown on her face. It’s not like Allison is dumb, but when she’s uncertain about something, sometimes she falls back to regroup rather than push on, which Derek is counting on. If he can just make her waver for a couple more seconds, she’ll probably change the subject to just talking him into going with her to the shower or something like that, trying to make him feel better.

But he forgets there’s Scott, too, and Scott might not be as quick with the insights as Allison, but the guy is just so _thoughtful_. Literally, in that he keeps focused on other people instead of himself and while that drives Derek—and, honestly, everybody else—a little insane with how it leads Scott into stupid heroics, it also means he’ll come up with insights that make Derek think true alphas get emotional mindreading along with the no-kill power boost.

“This isn’t about you still thinking your family was all your fault, is it?” Scott says.

Derek stares at him, because that’s pretty left-field. And also, right. And so Derek doesn’t have time to hide a reaction.

“What? Oh…oh, no, _Derek_ ,” Allison says, suddenly dropping forward to—to hug Derek, with her face tucked right into his neck.

Over her shoulder, Scott looks unhappy in the way of somebody who did not want to be right. He starts to go on, then stops and tugs at his hair. Then he sighs. “Suddenly all that stuff Peter was saying makes sense…”

“What?” Derek says.

“Peter,” Scott says again, while he’s giving himself a shake. He rumples his hair again, then looks up with a determined set to his jaw and shoulders. “He pulled me over after the last pack meeting and was going on about—I thought he thought we were thinking about using Stiles and him arguing all the time to scare you off, but…okay. Okay. No. Derek, listen, we are _not_ with you because we feel guilty about your family.”

“I mean, I _do_ feel guilty about them, but that’s not why I’m doing this, you know,” Allison says, pulling herself back up and gesturing at the three of them. “This? This is because I like you. And Scott likes you.”

“And I think we both really hope you’re doing it because you like us, too,” Scott says. He smiles at Derek and it’s a little nervous and a little wistful, and why in God’s name he’d feel like either when he’s got a steady partner and a loving family and lots of friends who aren’t worried he’ll get them killed is beyond Derek. But it’s Scott, so it’s real. “But…okay, if that’s not…if it’s mixed up with stuff or confusing or…I’m trying to say, we’re not going to judge, okay? Or kick you out. I just—we just—hopefully, you’ll get to know us better, and we can maybe help with giving you other reasons to stick around, and—”

“You are staying, right?” Allison asks. She’s better at keeping the nerves out of her smile, but it’s all over her scent, and her heartbeat. “Till we can talk you into it?”

Derek opens his mouth, then closes it. Has to swallow down the impulse to laugh, because it’s ridiculous, what they’re saying. They can’t really mean it. He got his fucking family _burned alive_. 

But they do, and they keep looking at him. Waiting for him, and he swallows again, against the thick taste in his mouth, and…he’s a shitty liar. Always has been. It’s why Kate had him wrapped around her little finger in no time. “Kind of no point to that,” he says, and the inside of his chest twists hard when Allison winces. “I mean—I do like you. I just—”

“Oh,” Scott says, so relieved that Derek wants to push his head forward and press it against the man’s sagging shoulder. Then he straightens up again, all determination once more. “Because it’s what you do for people you like, Derek. You try and make them feel welcome.”

“Yeah,” Allison smiles, her fingertips curling gently around Derek’s jaw just before she kisses him. “So…let’s just give Lydia a call, okay? See how it goes?”

Well. It’s not like Derek has any other ideas. And he’s not leaving either.

It doesn’t feel quite as awful as he thought it would, he decides, as he nods and the two of them grin and pull him back down the bed. Yet, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The blood-filled vegetables are sort of a play on early New England vampire folklore (see: Mercy Brown), where vampires didn't really walk around as solid entities, it's more as if their corpse was magically drawing the life away from people where it lay in the grave. I'm also pretty sure I've read or heard of man-eating vegetables somewhere else.


	5. Chapter 5

“You’re all idiots,” Lydia tells them as she holds out her hand, fingers splayed, and examines the gleaming red nails on each finger. “First of all, you waited—”

Allison sighs. “You said you didn’t want your life upended for any more mysterious strangers just because they’ve got a pathetic life story.”

Lydia arches a brow. “And _obviously_ , the Hales are still strangers now that you and Scott order Derek’s sandwiches for him and Stiles has three binders full of past aliases that Peter’s used.”

“Oh, sorry, you usually order that and I just…” Scott says, looking after their departing waitress.

“Whatever, I don’t care,” Derek says, checking his phone for the time. “Look, they said you’d have an idea when we’ve been trying for weeks and—”

“ _Second_.” Lydia puts her hand down so that the nails click pointedly against the table. Then she leans forward, a threatening smile on her face. “Second. You somehow managed to miss their obvious common ground.”

Even Scott looks annoyed now. Granted, with him that just means he frowns some and then clears his throat to signal that he’d like to talk now, but still. He’s annoyed. “Lydia, we tried that. We tried to get them together over magic and research and killing evil things and I don’t see—”

“Ah, Derek, there you are,” Peter says, swinging into the diner. He has a suspiciously friendly smile on his face, and one of his hands stays behind his back as he walks up the aisle towards him, and he doesn’t seem the least bit surprised when Derek scrambles over Scott’s lap and gets out of the booth ahead of him or Allison. “I’ve been looking for you.”

Derek checks his phone again, then swivels as Peter tries to lean around him to look at the others. “You could’ve called or texted if it was an emergency.”

“Yes, of course I could have.” Peter was just trying to get at Scott or Allison to rile Derek up, and he makes that obvious by abandoning the attempt the moment he’s got Derek shoving into him. He smiles again, then keeps smiling as he hisses through his clenched teeth and brings his arm around to wave his phone at Derek. “But then I would be deprived of the opportunity to see your expression when I ask you _why_ you just hired an architect to draw up plans for a new house on our land?”

“I—what?” Derek says. “I didn’t—that wasn’t me. Why would I—we don’t know how long we’re going to be here yet, why would I do something like that?”

For another second Peter continues smiling at him. Then his uncle’s nostrils twitch. Peter stops smiling and leans back, then looks Derek up and down. His expression slowly changes to…even more annoyed? “You didn’t. Of course not. Obviously, it’s too much to expect you to be proactive about security for once.”

“What?” Derek says again. “What…are you—are you mad at me because I don’t want to stay now?”

“No, I’m irritated because you clearly do, and for a moment I thought you were being properly sneaky about it instead of your usual ridiculous passive-aggressive inability to take what you actually want,” Peter says, rolling his eyes. He glances at Scott and Allison—who look worried and now that Derek thinks about it, he might’ve phrased things slightly differently—then back at Derek before Derek can say anything. “Derek. I’m not going to kill you because you want to stay and continue your sappy little story about love conquering all. I may kill you because I can’t stomach the disgusting displays of affection, I may kill you because your IQ tends to drop straight into genocidal sociopath when you’re in love, but let’s be clear, I will _not_ be killing you just because you’ve decided to live here again.”

“You shouldn’t kill him period,” Scott protests.

Peter’s eyes flick over and the corner of his mouth twists, the way it does when he’s about to really rip flesh off somebody—and then Stiles storms into the diner.

“You!” he says.

He’s…pointing at Derek. Yes, Derek, since Derek looks at Peter and then back at Stiles, and by then Stiles has come up so that his finger is stabbing against Derek’s breastbone. “What?”

“You! Listen, I thought you were actually serious about good ol’ Scotty here, and with all the times he’s saved this town, he really doesn’t need to put up with you leading him on with the tragic backstory and the badboy leather,” Stiles snaps. Scott shifts in the booth and raises his hand and Stiles falters briefly, then come back up to shake his finger in Derek’s face. “Allison doesn’t deserve that bullshit either, she’s turned her whole family code around and they’re both good people so why the hell you’d just up and leave when you’ve got a good thing going—”

“I don’t—what—listen, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Derek finally manages to say. 

“Because you canceled my guy!” Stiles cries out, both hands waving in Derek’s face now. “Do you know how hard it is to find somebody licensed for both eastern and western methods of aligning architecture with telluric currents? Do you? Do you know how far out they’re booked?”

Derek ducks one flailing hand, then grabs the other and uses it to push Stiles back so if Stiles puts out one of his eyes, he’ll at least be sure the man had to make an intentional effort to do it. “I didn’t even know about the architect till Peter—”

He looks at Peter. Stiles looks at Peter. Peter looks back at both of them. “ _I_ didn’t cancel it,” Peter snorts. “I didn’t suggest that we engage one either. In fact, I didn’t find out till our current host congratulated us on deciding to move here permanently and offered to waive the cancellation fee.”

He looks at Stiles. When Stiles is silent, Derek also looks over and finds the man flushing. “Well, what, you’re the one who blamed me for the fact that you couldn’t find better housing, because the hosts you had at first left a bad guest review for you because of the ‘bloody clothes and loud noises at night,’” Stiles mutters, avoiding their gazes. “So I hacked in there to find this so-called guest review, and what do I find, but DMs where you’re talking about how your nephew doesn’t feel safe here anymore but you know you’d paid for the whole month.”

“I said no such thing,” Peter says. 

Stiles frowns, starts to say something in an annoyed tone, and then stops himself and fumbles out his phone. “You totally did text that, I have the proof right here…”

“I didn’t, and anyway, Derek’s not leaving,” Peter says firmly.

“I’m not?” Derek says.

“No,” Stiles says, glancing up.

Derek starts to ask whether he gets a say, because look, no, he’s _not_ leaving, but Peter’s eyeing Stiles. And not in a hostile way.

“So you hired an architect to get us to stay?” Peter says.

Stiles is still trying to find that text, and takes a moment to look up. “Well, yeah, look, I figured if I proved you can, in fact, design a house with good security—and let me tell you, intent spells have come a long way in the last few years—you might get over the whole family trauma part.”

“Oh, I know that,” Peter says, without his usual sarcasm. If anything, he almost sounds as if he’s interrupting because…because he has another idea and he wants to have some sort of actual, thoughtful discussion about it. “But that’s not really Derek’s hang-up these days. It’s more about he doesn’t think he deserves things, so he’d rather punish himself by letting them slip through his fingers when they’re just going to come after him and get themselves killed that way and it’ll all end in a horribly predictable increase in guilt for him.”

“ _Oh_. Oh, yeah, I can totally see that,” Stiles says, also looking thoughtful. He finally lowers his phone and looks Peter in the eye. “So…what were you going to do, threaten him with blackmail and death if he doesn’t stay with them?”

“It does work,” Peter shrugs.

“Hey,” Derek says.

“Wait,” Allison and Scott say.

There are two low, sharp thuds, exactly the sound a hard leather shoe makes when it hits a human shin. “Shut up,” Lydia says.

Stiles and Peter aren’t even paying attention. They keep looking at each other, with this increasing interest in their eyes, and also both of their scents are starting to get tinges of…of…Derek decides he should move away now.

“What kind of blackmail?” Stiles asks. “’cause, I mean, in the long-term that could backfire if he still thinks removing himself would take them out of the danger zone.”

“Yes, I realize that, so I was considering some ways to increase codependency,” Peter says. “Doesn’t seem that difficult, with the personality types involved.”

When Derek’s halfway to the door, Scott and Allison give up on trying to squeeze around Stiles and Peter and just hop over booth walls till they can join him. Scott looks deeply apologetic. “I’ll talk to Stiles later,” he says. “He just talks like that, he doesn’t actually mean…”

“Um,” Allison says, nudging Scott’s arm.

He turns and looks back at the booth, where Stiles and Peter have taken their emptied seats and are consulting something on Stiles’ phone. Maybe. Stiles appears to be overlapping into Peter’s lap, and Peter’s face is tilted more towards Stiles’ throat than towards the table.

“I’m not, by the way,” Derek says. He starts slightly when Scott and Allison twist back towards him. From the expressions on their faces, he could probably pretend he hadn’t even said anything and they’d believe him, but…hell. He knows what he’s doing, and right now is probably the only time in the next couple weeks that he’ll know for sure it’s not down to whatever Stiles and Peter are plotting. “Leaving. I’m not leaving. I’m okay with staying. If you don’t—”

Allison is okay with it, says the way she throws her arms around him and kisses him. And so is Scott, considering he pushes them out into the small lobby between the inner and outer doors and then has his turn sucking on Derek’s tongue, too.

“See? Mutual love of being terrible to somebody else, that’s all it took,” Lydia says, making them all jar apart with unpleasant surprise. She stands there on the threshold for a moment, deeply self-satisfied, and then tosses her hair over one shoulder. “Honestly. Amateurs.”

Lydia strides out of the diner. Derek opens his mouth, then closes it. Then turns around and Stiles is _definitely_ completely in Peter’s lap at this point, and—and appears to have his hand on Peter’s nape and Peter is putting up with it and. 

“So…you want to go back to our place and, um, regroup?” Scott suggests. “I mean…this isn’t really what I thought would happen, but it doesn’t look like anybody will get hurt, at least right now, and I, um. I really don’t…know what we should…”

“Yeah,” Derek says. “Yeah, let’s go.”

Are all sorts of potential threats still hanging over his head? Does he still think he’s being an idiot and making all kinds of bad judgment calls? Is Peter going to corner him later, now with Stiles’ help, and make him regret ever coming back to Beacon Hills?

Those are all stupid questions, and Derek isn’t even going to bother with them right now. He’s the guy he is, with the life he’s got, and at the very least, he’s not a fucking hypocrite. He’ll deal with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eastern feng shui and Western ley line ideas have gotten conflated a lot in recent times, but they spring out of totally different traditions.
> 
> They really should have gone to Lydia first.


	6. You're Going To Think This Is An Epilogue

“So,” Stiles says, pushing himself off Peter’s naked, so very, very naked chest and God, why are werewolves so hot? It’s like when they aren’t driving him insane, they’ve all signed up for the happy-Stiles-cock bodybuilder package at the local gym. “Listen, I admit I wasn’t as understanding as I could’ve been about your past trauma, and that was sort of partly motivated by jealousy over the fact that you have an actual searchable digital copy of _De Vermis Mysteriis_ when I’ve gotta get it scanned page-by-page by a _really_ cranky librarian in Massachusetts—”

Peter blinks at Stiles, twice, very slowly. Cocks his head, and then shifts in place, with the kind of lazy grace that results in light artistically gleaming off the sweaty, amply muscled planes of his chest and he isn’t even trying, he’s got a confused frown on his face, and Stiles’ cock is already twitching back to life. “Deaton doesn’t have that one?”

“No. No, he doesn’t, and you’d think that one would be a basic reference for a guy devoted to the—anyway, no, one distraction is enough and I’m not getting derailed, I’m going somewhere with this,” Stiles says, shrugging his shoulder into his jaw to thump himself back on track. “Okay. Where was—right, and fine, yeah, your archaic Hebrew is better than mine, and yes, you are _really_ hot and I was really, really lying when I called you a cesspool of smug that only a communicable disease could love—”

“Much appreciated,” Peter smirks, flexing his arms and shoulders and basically everything right in front of Stiles.

He is totally trying now, and Stiles is…buying what he’s selling. But also, Stiles is sitting on his cock, and can see that and throw in a nice little hip-roll that seriously discourages Peter from getting up like his hands were moving to do. “The _point is_ ,” Stiles says, trying not to pant too much. “I’m still right about the root cause, Peter. It’s not just a disguised Nemeton, or a cult, or a…are you listening to me?”

“Well…were you intending me to?” Peter says. The tiny moan at the end kind of undermines his arched brows.

Stiles rolls his eyes and stops moving, and then smacks Peter’s hand when the other man tries to reach for him. “Peter, pay attention, okay, because round two depends on your answer here and do you or do you not acknowledge that it is, in fact, the Great fucking Pumpkin? And that that’s a legit, real, actual thing of eons-old malice and not just my overactive imagination?”

For a second Peter’s silent. Which is a really stupid play, seeing how his cock is telling Stiles’ ass everything that Stiles needs to know. Stiles bears down on Peter and then, when the man’s groaning and shuddering back into the bed, he pops himself off.

Bites his lip a little because gah, but he really needs to get on that pseudo-supernatural-healing-magic research, but he’s only human and he’s kind of used to things being flawed. Peter, on the other hand? Oh, werewolf doesn’t like that, and werewolf whines and reaches for Stiles and then jerks back his jaw to show his throat when Stiles leans over him. Seriously, if Stiles had realized all of that posturing wasn’t actually linked to a non-negotiable dominance complex, he would’ve done this a long time ago.

“All right, yes, all the evidence does seem to support that conclusion,” Peter finally grumbles. He looks away for a second, then sighs and turns back to Stiles. “Well, pardon me if I have some trouble accepting that we have to defeat something whose most famous worshipper is a blanket-dragging martyr from a kids’ comic. Though then again, it really shouldn’t surprise me that this town managed to replace a very respectable, if misguided, Nemeton with something like that.”

“Uh. You remember we told you we decommissioned the Nemeton because there was a darach, right?” Stiles says. But he’s satisfied, so the next time Peter reaches for him, he allows the man’s hand to stay on his thigh. “Okay, granted, we probably should’ve rooted it up fully and filled up the hole with concrete so nobody else could…but hey. Um. Evil ancient squash deity we need to defeat for good?”

Peter ducks Stiles’ hand, which admittedly was kind of half-hearted about pushing at him, and continues twisting over as he mouths up Stiles’ thigh. “But Stiles, we’ve only just buried the hatchet, don’t you think we should celebrate our new alliance? Besides, you said if I—”

“Oh, my God, really? You’re really going to let me win just for the sex?” Stiles says. He and Peter lock eyes, and then damn it, the man’s lashes are really long. And his breath is really teasing where it’s ghosting against Stiles’ balls. But damn it, Stiles has principles, and a very carefully curated set of them at that. “I thought you had some respect for intellectual curiosity, even when you were being an asshole.”

“Well, I do, and I thought you had a healthy appreciation for pragmatism, even when you were being needlessly defensive,” Peter says. Purrs, really, his tongue-tip showing just often enough beyond his lips to remind Stiles it’s there and he’s very good with it and damn it. Then he cocks his head again. “Fine, another compromise, in that case. You fuck me and that way you can make that call to your friend about that last translation.”

Stiles is both impressed and outraged at Peter’s audacity. And then—then. Well. It’s a thought, and he considers it, and then…“Yeah, okay, we can do that. Get me the lube while you’re getting my phone, would you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _De Vermis Mysteriis_ is borrowed from Stephen King's canon, and Massachusetts is referring to Miskatonic University's library.
> 
> The Great Pumpkin is from the _Peanuts_ comic strip, where it's not evil but a metaphor for various statements about religious faith that Charles M. Schultz wanted to make.
> 
> Well, no, getting together wasn't going to stop the bickering. Just makes it into foreplay.


	7. This Is The Epilogue

Lydia lifts her head, then shakes it. Then she shifts her flashlight to her other hand and uses her now-freed hand to stop Erica when the other woman turns towards the ringing bag. “It’s just Stiles, we’ll deal with him later.”

“Well, we better, because my Saturday night plans did _not_ include doing his dirty work for him,” Erica grumbles, shoving the spade into the hole before them. “Why are we doing this again? Wasn’t it an option to just torch this puppy?”

“If you torch it, we can’t recover any viable seeds,” Braeden points out.

There’s a rustling noise and all three of them look at the shriveled remains of the vine trailing out of far side of the hole. Braeden raises the spraying wand attached to the metal canister she’s carrying, then lowers it as Lydia shakes her head.

“And…why do we want viable seeds? I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but the idea is to _stop_ the ancient evil pumpkin god?” Erica mutters, going back to her digging with renewed enthusiasm. “If we’re just going to let this start over again, we could’ve just left the boys on it.”

“We’re not letting this start over again,” Lydia says. She sweeps the flashlight beam over the vine again, then tilts her head as if listening to something. “But that’s what we said about the Nemeton, and this happened because clearly, somebody didn’t think through what happens after a Nemeton is destroyed. I have some ideas about that.”

Erica pauses. “…evil ideas?”

“Well, would you like to call Scott? Or Stiles?” Lydia asks, brow arched. “See what ideas they have?”

“I guess at least somebody’s actually paying attention to running the place,” Erica says, shrugging. “’bout time, honestly. All that fuss and really, wasn’t about anything at all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Lydia's starting a seed bank. Or teaching herself how to train sentient pumpkins into defensive barriers. Or maybe she's just going to make roasted salted pepitas, which are really tasty. You'll never know.


End file.
